Sunday, November 7, 2010

Surprise Bday Dinner

This weekend, my brother-in-law Mark, and his wife, Tara, flew back to Toronto all the way from sunny So Cal for a brief weekend visit. Once Mark graduates this Spring, he and Tara will be moving back here for Mark to be the worship pastor at Harvest Durham which we are so excited about. And since Tara's birthday is next week, we decided to surprise her with an early celebration by making an Italian dinner (to honor her heritage) and to make her desserts out of one of her favorite items: lemon. We love you Mark and Tara and can't wait to see you back here with Daniel next month!

Jet getting his par-tay on

With the birthday girl, Aunt T!

Chowing

Spaghetti and turkey meatballs

Goat cheese-pesto tart

Tara loves all things lemon and I love lemon curd - nothing else beats it when it's homemade. The taste is so wonderfully lemony and fresh and lemon curd is a great base for a lot of different kinds of desserts. Here is my three way take on it: the first was incorporating it into this lemon cupcake.

Second was making these lemon curd butter cookie sandwiches

And last but not least, mini lemon meringue tarts - so good!

And for your enjoyment, here are some of the latest pics of the Monkey:

He's starting to look like such a boy and not a baby anymore!

Check out those pearly whites!

This has been a very common sight lately, he somehow manages to kick himself out of his pajamas.

I look over one day to see the Monkey just like this, hanging upside down, as happy as can be. *sigh* - always making us smile!

3 comments:

Its daniel! I can't wait to come back - i was jealous looking at those dinner photos - sue, you cooked up a storm - and those pics of jet are amazing - especially the one of him just dangling upside down hahalove you guys!